TGS 2008: XBLA De-listing Deferred

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Microsoft has no immediate plans to remove any titles from Live.

By Ryan Geddes

A few months back, Microsoft stirred the downloadable gaming waters by letting it slip that it was thinking about "de-listing" some under-performing Xbox Live Arcade titles. Essentially, games meeting certain criteria (sluggish sales, poor ratings, etc.) could potentially be removed from the service's browsable index over time.

In an interview at the Tokyo Game Show in Japan this week, Microsoft corporate vice president John Schappert backed away from that perception a bit, saying the information about XBLA de-listing had been taken out of context and that there was no plan to do any such thing.

Instead, Schappert said, Microsoft has simply "set parameters by which we can delist" games and is not moving forward with any particular plan to limit the number of Xbox Live Arcade titles that gamers can browse through and buy on XBLA.

Schappert said Microsoft has no interest in actually de-listing titles unless the amount of content becomes "cumbersome" on Xbox Live.

"We have no immediate plans to act on de-listing," he said.

In fact, Schappert suggested that the pending release of the Xbox Live Dashboard overhaul would make de-listing titles unnecessary, as the improvements to the service include better sorting options that should make wading through XBLA title data easier and more intuitive.

When asked if a text-based search function will be built into the Dashboard in the future, Schappert stopped short of confirming it was in the works, but he noted that Microsoft is continuing to look at the option and said the company has "plans well into next year" for expanding on the new Dashboard.